Kan Abe

Kan Abe (29 April 1894-30 January 1946) was a Seiyukai Party politician in Japan. Abe was the father of Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe and the grandfather of Shinzo Abe.

Biography
Kan Abe was born in Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan in 1894, and he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University before becoming a Seiyukai Party politician. He failed in his attempt to be elected to the National Diet in 1928, but he became mayor of Heki in 1933 and later served in the prefectural assembly. In 1937, he was elected to the House of Representatives as an independent candidate, and he ran again in 1942, opposing Hideki Tojo's militarist policies. Despite Tojo's attempts to purge anti-military candidates from the Diet, Abe won re-election, and he assisted with Tojo's ouster in 1944. He died in 1946 while preparing to run for the first postwar parliamentary election.